Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: India’s payments sector has attracted nearly $5.8 billion in funding across 371 disclosed equity rounds since 2021, underscoring the transformative impact of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) on the country’s digital payments ecosystem, a report said.
The report by market intelligence platform Tracxn, titled “The India Payments Landscape: How UPI Made India Self-Reliant in Payments”, highlights how a public digital payments infrastructure has fostered a thriving private-sector ecosystem encompassing consumer payment apps, business payment platforms and financial technology infrastructure providers.
According to the study, consumer-focused payment platforms accounted for the largest share of investments, attracting around 53 per cent of total funding, or approximately $3.1 billion.
Business payments firms received about 38 per cent, while payment infrastructure and API-based enablers accounted for the remaining 9 per cent, equivalent to roughly $526 million.
“Payments companies have raised $5.8 billion across 371 disclosed equity rounds since January 2021, produced eight IPOs and 25 acquisitions, and begun consolidating around a handful of well-funded companies,” the report said.
“The report’s central finding is that a public rail that charges merchants nothing has helped seed and scale a private industry above it, even as a new law reopens the question of how the rail itself should be funded,” it added.
Funding activity peaked during the technology investment boom of 2021 before slowing amid the broader funding downturn between 2022 and 2024.
